Georgics
Virgil
Vergil. The Poems of Vergil. Rhoades, James, translator. London: Oxford University Press, 1921.
- Of sickness, too, the causes and the signs
- I'll teach thee. Loathly scab assails the sheep,
- When chilly showers have probed them to the quick,
- And winter stark with hoar-frost, or when sweat
- Unpurged cleaves to them after shearing done,
- And rough thorns rend their bodies. Hence it is
- Shepherds their whole flock steep in running streams,
- While, plunged beneath the flood, with drenched fell,
- The ram, launched free, goes drifting down the tide.
- Else, having shorn, they smear their bodies o'er
- With acrid oil-lees, and mix silver-scum
- And native sulphur and Idaean pitch,
- Wax mollified with ointment, and therewith
- Sea-leek, strong hellebores, bitumen black.
- Yet ne'er doth kindlier fortune crown his toil,
- Than if with blade of iron a man dare lance
- The ulcer's mouth ope: for the taint is fed
- And quickened by confinement; while the swain
- His hand of healing from the wound withholds,
- Or sits for happier signs imploring heaven.
- Aye, and when inward to the bleater's bones
- The pain hath sunk and rages, and their limbs
- By thirsty fever are consumed, 'tis good
- To draw the enkindled heat therefrom, and pierce
- Within the hoof-clefts a blood-bounding vein.
- Of tribes Bisaltic such the wonted use,
- And keen Gelonian, when to Rhodope
- He flies, or Getic desert, and quaffs milk
- With horse-blood curdled. Seest one far afield
- Oft to the shade's mild covert win, or pull
- The grass tops listlessly, or hindmost lag,
- Or, browsing, cast her down amid the plain,
- At night retire belated and alone;
- With quick knife check the mischief, ere it creep
- With dire contagion through the unwary herd.
- Less thick and fast the whirlwind scours the main
- With tempest in its wake, than swarm the plagues
- Of cattle; nor seize they single lives alone,
- But sudden clear whole feeding grounds, the flock
- With all its promise, and extirpate the breed.
- Well would he trow it who, so long after, still
- High Alps and Noric hill-forts should behold,
- And Iapydian Timavus' fields,
- Ay, still behold the shepherds' realms a waste,
- And far and wide the lawns untenanted.